Distribution of ballots with preset candidates, issues, and choices (including the write-in option in some cases),

Selection of preferred choices (often in secret, called a secret ballot),

Secure collection of ballots for unbiased counting, and

Proclamation of the will of the voters as the will of the people for their government.

Reasons for voting

In a representative democracy, voting commonly implies election: a way for an electorate to select among candidates for office. In politics voting is the method by which the electorate of a democracy appoints representatives in its government.

Types of votes

Different voting systems use different types of vote. Suppose that the options in some election are Alice, Bob, Charlie, Daniel, and Emily and they are all vying for the same position:

In a voting system that uses a single vote, the voter selects his or her most preferred candidate. "Plurality voting systems" use single votes.

A development on the single vote system is to have two-round elections, or repeat first-past-the-post. However, the winner must win by 50% plus one, called a simple majority. If subsequent votes must be used, often a candidate, the one with the fewest votes or anyone who wants to move their support to another candidate, is removed from the ballot.

An alternative to the Two-round voting system is the single round Preferential voting system (Also referred to as Alternative vote or Instant run-off) as used in Australia, Ireland and some states in the USA. Voters rank each candidate in order of preference (1,2,3 etc). Votes are distributed to each candidate according to the preferences allocated. If no single candidate has 50% or more votes then the candidate with the least votes is excluded and their votes redistributed according to the voters nominated order of preference. The process repeating itself until a candidate has 50% or more votes. The system is designed to produce the same result as an exhaustive ballot but using only a single round of voting.

In a voting system that uses a multiple vote, the voter can vote for any subset of the alternatives. So, a voter might vote for Alice, Bob, and Charlie, rejecting Daniel and Emily. Approval voting uses such multiple votes.

In a voting system that uses a ranked vote, the voter has to rank the alternatives in order of preference. For example, they might vote for Bob in first place, then Emily, then Alice, then Daniel, and finally Charlie. Preferential voting systems, such as those famously used in Australia, use a ranked vote.

In a voting system that uses a scored vote (or range vote), the voter gives each alternative a number between one and ten (the upper and lower bounds may vary). See range voting.

Some "multiple-winner" systems may have a single vote or one vote per elector per available position. In such a case the elector could vote for Bob and Charlie on a ballot with two votes. These types of systems can use ranked or unranked voting, and are often used for at-large positions such as on some city councils.

Fair voting

Results may lead at best to confusion, at worst to violence and even civil war, in the case of political rivals. Many alternatives may fall in the latitude of indifference—they are neither accepted nor rejected. Avoiding the choice that the most people strongly reject may sometimes be at least as important as choosing the one that they most favor. There are social choice theory definitions of seemingly reasonable criteria that are a measure of the fairness of certain aspects of voting, including non-dictatorship, unrestricted domain, non-imposition, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives but Arrow's impossibility theorem states that no voting system can meet all these standards.

Voting and information

Modern political science has questioned whether average citizens have sufficient political information to cast meaningful votes. A series of studies coming out of the University of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s argued that voters lack a basic understanding of current issues, the liberal–conservativeideological dimension, and the relative idealogical dilemma. [3]

Voting is when people make a decision by saying what they want. It can be for getting a leader, passing a law, and other things. When people are done voting, the votes are counted (often by machines) and the side that gets the most votes wins.